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a passionate liberal like Edgar Quinet could write about Machiavelli, and then see what all the English liberals have said about him, from Macaulay to H. G. Wells. It is, in a way, the difference between the intellectual method and the evangelical method. Edgar Quinet tries to understand Machiavelli in spite of his resistance, while Macaulay and Wells cry to high heaven.

This perhaps is what Matthew Arnold means by accepting our lower self, developing it confidently and harmoniously, as against developing it under checks and doubts, and unsystematically and often grossly. But it seems to me that the French, for all their frivolity, have not done so badly with their lower selves. It is not they, but the more Biblical peoples, who have taken so ravenously to psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is needed by those whose souls are divided against themselves, and whose grossness is not in hand.

I do not say that the French have not tried to enforce righteousness like the English and the Americans. At the very time Matthew Arnold was writing, many Parisians were holding up their hands in holy horror over an opera that was almost as wicked as Madame Bovary. It was condemned as 'impressionistic,' as 'Wagnerian in bad taste,' as pestiferous, as cheap. Its heroine was described as 'une hideuse drôlesse,' 'une ignoble gueuse,' offensive against delicacy and morals. The name of this revolting opera was Carmen!

The fact that such prudery once existed does not mean that all moral indignation is prudery. I have no doubt that certain plays in Paris to-day are lewd. I am quite sure that Paris harbors many vicious and dangerous people. I am quite sure that money will buy almost anything a cynic wants in Paris, and I suppose it is best to go to that city expecting to battle for your virtue against fearful odds. But I

suggest it is not these concrete wickednesses that create misunderstanding and moral doubt in the good people I know. These ugly things simply fatten up the antecedent prejudice that was born long ago of the struggle of Protestantism against Rome and reënforced by the godlessness of the French Revolution.

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It seems to me important, then, to approach the French with a firm recognition that their moral idiom is not, and cannot be, the familiar idiom of the English-speaking and Bible-reading peoples. And it is well to trace to its source the prejudice that is so ingrained in those who do not share this recognition. I remember a British editor who came to New York to work in the opinion factory at the beginning of the war. In answer to a question as to the value of the French he lowered his eyes and piously said, "The French, I am afraid, are decadent.' The good man believed it. He did not know that his belief was the child of Matthew Arnold's misunderstanding, which in turn was the grandchild of Wordsworth's moralizing, which in turn descended from national conflicts that were only too glad to cluster around, and build on, the Bible.

Decadent? I should rather say vigorous and virile. They have developed an extreme mental flexibility, a tough fibre, a fine craftsmanship which calls for its own sort of righteousness, an exquisite art of life. Traveling by one road from Rome, as the English traveled by another, since all roads seem to lead from Rome, they have yet traveled with sure and philosophic foot. A great and splendid people,' as Buckle said, ‘a people full of mettle, high-spirited, abounding in knowledge, and perhaps less oppressed by superstition than any other in Europe.'

Buckle added, 'always found unfit to exercise political power.' With the examples before us of the Hungarians, the Italians, the Spanish, the Russians, the Chinese, with the high triumph of European diplomacy and Biblical culture that came to a head in 1914, and with the glories of the Versailles peace, I do not know who can boast of political genius. But the French have not the virtues of a machine tradition. I am struck, I admit, by a certain sociological infantility in the French. They are bad on social statistics, which means on social knowledge and management. They are to be criticized on public hygiene. They have not the habit of machine organization in regard to society, in the sense that the English and Germans and Americans have. Any small problem -clean milk for Paris, for example seems to find the French without the right machinery. There are facts about their hospitals that make one shudder. I am glad I was not born a French foundling. I am glad I am not one of the poor slaves who are petitioning the French Government, or the French banks, for a tiny little raise. But if the lack of sentimentality sometimes goes to the edge of a lack of sentiment, if property is sometimes Moloch, and inheritance laws like Chinese foot-binding, this hardness has been bred in a country specially placed. Even Buckle, so luminous, did not grasp the military reasons for French centralization. I mean, the military superstition. He thought it was some sort of incapacity for political power.

But the French are educable. In these matters, as in all matters, they do not lie to themselves, and this is a supreme virtue. Observe the beautiful art of honesty in an unbeliever like Jules Lemaître writing of a believer like Louis Veuillot. Read Lanson's revisions in the later edition of his French Literature. These men have a virility

that I find lacking in, for instance, Mr. H. G. Wells revamping his Outline of History for the W. J. Bryan belt. It is an old-fashioned virility, perhaps, the sort one finds in an old-fashioned American like Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

It is with these virtues in mind that I am surprised at the temerity of those who feel morally superior to the French. Is it not to the account of righteousness that theirs is the white country in which colored folk may be sure of the most liberty, equality, fraternity? I see French women given the lead in many situations where Maggie Tulliver was expected to weep and cling. I have read reports of a French school inspector, in a remote commune, as fine in perception and idealism as anything Matthew Arnold ever wrote. I hold it for righteous, even, that the French tolerate on the Paris news stands both the royalist and the communist dailies. When one knows the French, and I know a half dozen, one feels, 'Here at last is civilization.' That is to say, the suffusion of right feeling by good taste and good sense. It has n't the Biblical idiom, but neither had Plato nor Zoroaster, neither had Confucius nor Lao-tse.

One may say, 'But you miss the point. They have n't the Inner Light; they are n't carried away; they are n't poetic like the English, musical like the Germans, religious like the Russians.'

No, I answer, they are unique. I don't ask Wagner from the English, Byron from the Danes, Degas from the Germans, Anatole France from the Spanish, Fragonard from the Russians. I don't ask the English Inner Light from la ville lumière.

Is it not specifically Victorian to discover l'homme sensuel moyen in this French civilization? I remember when I was a small boy hearing my mother exclaim about the wickedness of Paris. On urging her to go into details, she

became mysterious and vague, but at last she said there were 'naked women' in the Tuileries. Standing before one of the statues in the Tuileries not long ago, I could not help laughing. The elaborate coiffure, the wasp waist, and the general suggestion of the fashion plate gave to this lady and her sisters an aspect purely comic. Could anyone ever have looked on her as shocking? But

my mother, though a Catholic, viewed these things as a Victorian, no less than Matthew Arnold. It was part of a radical misunderstanding which has its roots in a religious question. The Victorians firmly believed there was only one law of righteousness, and that was Victorian. Must we go on with the same prejudice, even if we do not all insist on the Bible?

LEAVES FROM A MISSION DIARY

BY HARCOURT JOHNSON

SAN SALVADOR, locally known as Cat Island, the scene of my mission, is in the Bahama group of the British West Indies. The work of the English Church mission is carried out in these islands under the able Bishop of Nassau. While I was on Cat Island, I had the help of another white minister, whose modesty forbids that even in my journal I should mention the outstanding qualities he possessed for that particular work, and the immeasurable good he did in the way of uplifting the sluggish islanders, especially along agricultural lines.

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raised the standards in the other islands, and also to the fact that the poor harbor facilities do not allow of much communication with the capital city.

The natives are markedly without the character to sustain interest and enthusiasm in any field of endeavor; but at the same time it must be noted that they are quite happy and content with conditions. Where a few more ambitious souls have sprung up, they have been able to seek better things in Miami, Florida, until the recent immigration restrictions of the American Government closed that avenue of release from mental and economic bondage.

To-day the much depleted population numbers about forty-five hundred souls. The largest settlement holds some five hundred inhabitants, and the smallest perhaps a mere dozen.

In addition to the English mission, which at present has no white minister, there is a very strong Baptist mission, carried on entirely by the native Baptists and staffed with local colored

ministers. This group has by far the largest number of church adherents. The Methodists have one small congregation on the island, also in charge of a colored man.

My mission contained ten small churches. At the head of each of these is a colored catechist, who holds services and carries on the work of the Church generally, in the absence of a white minister.

The stress of work, and the fact that during the past few years the mission on the island has been steadily declining, made it necessary for the other white minister and myself to be be separated most of the time. Months would pass during which neither of us would see a white face, or have anyone of the least degree of real intellect with whom to talk. This in itself was perhaps our greatest hardship.

January 9.- Nassau, Bahama Islands. The harbor is dropping slowly astern. Masts, short and tall, are making tentative stabs at the hurrying clouds overhead. The wind is fresh on our quarter, and is waving the tall palms that line the shore in a sort of last good-bye to us as we say our own good-byes to Nassau, to civilization, and turn our prow to the east, where awaits this strange new life into which we are venturing. . . . The dusky crew are making all preparations for the voyage: trimming the sails, and stowing away the oddments of our copious baggage which came aboard in the last-minute rush. Someone is singing the 'Maris Stella'so dear to these native mariners. The Bishop, now in trim yachting cap and blue reefer, tells me that he was anxious to name this boat the 'Maris Stella,' but some queer shipping laws do not allow it. Perhaps 't is best so; the former episcopal yacht finally joined the Nassau rum-runners, carrying with

her the ill-fitting name, 'Message of Peace.'

January 12. The days have been very lazy. A northeaster tossed us about some, and then gave way to listless calm. For three days now we have skirted the Exuma Cays, few of them inhabited. Like all Bahamian land, they are dull, flat, and uninteresting, but they do make a perfect frame for the pictures of water, which are indescribable. Eyes grow strained and tired with watching the ceaseless changes of color. changes of color. Greens, purples, blues of all shades, are constantly mingling, fading, reappearing, as sun and cloud chase each other high over the Bahamian Banks.

Last night the Bishop talked in his sleep. Dicky, his Negro cabin-boy, says: 'My lord hit hisself t'ree times and say "Nova Scotia." So does Dicky render Nobis quoque.

If this wind continues to freshen, we shall reach our destination to-night. Cat Island! Curious name; it must have some origin, but no native seems to know of it. The map designates it San Salvador, and thereby sets it up as a rival to Watling's Island as the possible landfall of Columbus in the New World. I was once convinced of the Watling's theory, most people are, but loyalty to my new parish must now change my mind.

Caught two fish as we passed through Galliot Cut this morning: one a barracuda, the other a fine black-fin snapper. The latter served very well as a table dish. After moon-set, in the early hours of the morning, Jo, the mate, called us to see the Southern Cross. I had no idea it was visible anywhere in the Bahamas.

January 13. We dropped anchor at Arthur's Town, Cat Island, as the dusk was mellowing the glaring colors of the little town. A huge crowd relatively speaking- gathered on

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the quay to bid us welcome. Always emotionally taut, these Negroes let themselves go in a rousing cheer as we scrambled up the rickety ladder. We were led across the street to our future home, open, and lighted with one candle guttering in the wind. It contains only four tiny rooms and an unroofed porch. There is no ceiling, and the partitions do not reach to the roof.

January Ferguson (I believe he is the sexton) was foremost in enthusiasm over our arrival, especially when he learned that now there are to be two ministers on the island, one with headquarters here, the other stationed at the Bight. He danced a jig of joy on the dining-room table, until the Bishop, fearing for the only piece of furniture in the house, bade him desist. . . . The stop here is only temporary; two services, and then we are to 'trip' for settlements farther down the shore. Dumfries and the Bight are to be visited, and then we shall round the Devil's Point - ominous name for Port Howe.

January 14. Left Arthur's Town yesterday and dropped down to Dumfries for afternoon service. This is a very small settlement with no church. The people want one badly, but there are no funds. Later anchored for the night in Bennett's Harbor and gave them a service there this morning. The church is in frightful disrepair and very dirty. These local colored catechists, who carry on when there are no ministers resident, seem to have little idea of carrying out the maxim that cleanliness is next to godliness. Sailed all day in direction of the Bight, but wind fell off and we could not make it.

January 15.-Skipped the Bight, and came on here to Port Howe. This may have been Columbus's landingplace. We are anchored now under

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the lee of Columbus Bluff... returned from service. The Bishop introduced S and me to the flock. Beside me sat the famous 'Mother Ethel,' the only woman preacher in the Islands. She garbs herself like one of Fra Angelico's angels. As we passed her tiny chapel, — native Baptist, we noticed that doors and windows were being opened by the female sexton, and we suspected a rival 'meeting.' Inquiry elicited, however, that it was a graceful gesture of welcome to his lordship and the two new parsons. We are told that Mother Ethel is a wonderful preacher. Mr. P——, the white Baptist superintendent in Nassau, says that she has had no education and has never read a sermon book, but in gracefulness of thought and simplicity of expression she can put to shame many an eminent preacher.

Service over, the walk from the church to the beach was most amusing. The whole congregation must accompany us with lusty shouting of militant Church hymns; but alas! the Bishop's stride was too strenuous a tempo for the perfect coördination of leg and lung, and the resultant hop-skip-andjump effect was ludicrous. From the beach we embarked in the cutter, and as we rowed slowly into the moonpath the good folk on the shore sang

God be with you till we meet again.' The night air was warm and soft, fragrant with the tang of the sea mingling with the scent of the beach jasmine. Ahead lay the yacht, the moon riding like a beacon on her mizzenmast; astern the curving beach, glistening white against the fringe of sad-singing palm trees; the faint creak of the rowlocks told us that the crew was keeping time to the mellow voices of the darkies on the shore. A scene, an experience, that will live with one forever.

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